Sunday, May 13, 2012

Time or money?


I have very mixed feelings about this article which was recently published on a wedding blog (I'm not going to name it, and I've changed the text slightly to try and anonymise it - remembering that it's each to their own and you should do what you want). 


We saw our wedding as an opportunity to throw the biggest party of our lives and to share it with all our loved ones. So with each decision it was a matter of doing whatever we really wanted (we were only going to do it once so do it in style). Groom wanted a rolls Royce as the wedding car, I wanted Louboutins as my wedding shoes so we got them – we didn’t go in with a set budget in mind but rather the budget would be whatever it cost to have the perfect day for us and we both feel we really achieved it. 
I was pretty particular in how I wanted everything to look and had spent months searching through bridal magazines and trawling the internet for ideas and inspiration.





Even though our wedding had 180 guests we wanted it be very personal and intimate. Living on the other side of the world is so hard so we wanted to make the most of the opportunity to be with them all at once. What was most special to us both was having all these people that we both love in the one place at the one time. There was such a beautiful atmosphere on the day and the gorgeous weather certainly helped! I remember arriving at the venue after the ceremony and all of our guests had already arrived and were on the lawn mingling as we pulled up in the car it was such a happy moment.
The bride says that the most special thing was having all their people there together. I think this is a key aspect to many weddings. They live on the other side of the world too, and so it will have been even more important to them. On our wedding day we may have friends and family there that we haven't seen for 2 years. But I don't see how you can have 180 guests and still be personal and intimate. We're having 50, and I'm worried about how much time we'll get to spend with each person. 


She talks about the beautiful atmosphere and how arriving to meet her guests was a happy moment. Again this sounds good to me; I would love to take this memory away from our wedding. 


Then she says (with no actual numbers of course!!) that the budget would be "whatever it cost." Aaargh! There is such an obvious assumption here that the only way to have everything perfect is to spend lots of money on it. And she wanted it perfect - but the only thing she mentions researching is how it would look. They seem to have made every detail decision into a priority, and presumably paid the price accordingly. There are a lot more details mentioned in the article, but they are almost all aesthetics. 


I was hoping I could take some inspiration from a fellow bride around the world, but this wedding is so opposite to our priorities that I'm not sure I can. Very disappointing. 

2 comments:

Ainhoa @ALittleBite said...

Actually, when we started planning the wedding we didn't have a set budget in mind, because we had no idea how much things cost! We basically just said, whatever it costs to have a fun/nice without going overboard. Or what I really think we said, we'll spend as little as we can but still having a nice fun day and treating our guests well.

I guess some people would be shocked by that, but since we both try to always find the greatest deals possible, it's worked for us! We now know more or less how much we'll spend (and it's a budget we can work with) but we still don't know for sure (maybe because we're self-catering so the food/drink costs are hard to calculate?)

H said...

Very good point! I guess most people don't really know how much things cost, and it was hard knowing where to start. If you're a bargain hunter by nature it probably works pretty well, but if you don't have a limit the costs can spiral up so easily. At some point you have to add it all up...

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